Euronews

The list detailing the identities of thousands of people hiding money in offshore accounts could reveal 160 times more data than Wikileaks.

Analysing the details of what is now become known as Offshore Leaks will take some time, according to Catherine Boss, a journalist at Swiss paper Sonntagszeitung, who worked on the investigation to track the hidden cash.

“It’s just the beginning. We have only looked at about 10 percent of the Swiss businessmen and women involved and we’ll continue to work on it.”

Working across 170 countries, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) compiled the list of 130,000 names.

“The mega-wealthy have lots of choices about how they organise their financial lives and the average citizens of the world have very few choices. The average citizen generally ends up having to pay more, or live with fewer services in their home countries because of the drain of funds from their country’s treasuries,” said ICIJ member and one of Offshore Leak’s senior editors Michael Hudson.

The co-treasurer of French president Francois Hollande’s 2012 campaign, Jean-Jacques Augier, was one of the first to be outed, but he maintains he did nothing illegal.

It is estimated 25 trillion euros could have been hoarded away in banks that ask few questions. Offshore leaks has mainly checked out bank accounts in the British Virgin Islands.